Some thoughts on ways of knowing

Feminists, educationalists, psychologists, and scholars in general seem to point to the time period of the scientific revolution as the birthplace for our modern disconnect with our own lived experiences; a time of a profound transformation of and shift in human consciousness occurred.   It’s ideas have infiltrated cultures around the globe and resulted -I would argue-in litigious societies with high incarceration rates, unimaginable violence, and epidemic rates of psychosis.  I am increasingly fascinated by the way the mind relates its own experiences and the shared world ; the yin/yang relationship of intuition vs. reason.  I’m realizing that the deep contrast in the values assigned to these ways of knowing drives my own self image, and are often a crippling force in my ability as an artist and a woman to manifest myself and my ideas in the world.  I think there are significant parallels to be drawn between this struggle for knowledge and the primordial male (reason-sky) and female (intuition-earth) energies of the universe.  Most of us wear the skin of reason - to do otherwise would make us societal outcasts- but the continual demands for inauthentic expression takes its toll, and we are unable to live up to the demanded logic of the rational exteriors.  In The Reenchantment of the World, Morris Berman refers to this as the “sickness of contemporary life”, which stems from a futile attempt by the scientific culture to eradicate holistic perception.  The problem is that this holistic perception is rooted in our biology- it is part of the makeup of our beings, and so the denial of it creates schisms in behavior and psychology that are not easily reconciled.  (William Reich’s ideas about “body armour”- come to mind here).  In 1958 Michael Polanyi wrote a pivotal book about this, in which he described the difference between “tacit knowledge”- knowledge that can only be communicated via “extensive personal contact, regular interaction  and trust”, and explicit knowledge, which can be codified into language and transmitted.  Despite the fact that most of us think of ourselves as rational beings. most of our core values and ideas come from our lived experiences- from a kind of knowledge most of us are consciously unaware of possessing.  As the 17th century French mathematician Blaise Pascal said “The heart has its reasons which the reason does not at all perceive”.